Southern Living, rediscovered

While excavating further into the bowels of the hoards of our house well-furnished with modern antiquities (sounds better than junk or trash), we found a box of Southern Living magazines from around the turn of the century.  Here are a few scanned samples for storing in our electronic pile of “historical documents”:

Southern-Living-001 Southern-Living-002 Southern-Living-003 Southern-Living-004 Southern-Living-005 Southern-Living-006 Southern-Living-007 Southern-Living-008 Southern-Living-009 Southern-Living-010 Southern-Living-011 Southern-Living-012 Southern-Living-013a Southern-Living-013b Southern-Living-013c Southern-Living-013d Southern-Living-014a Southern-Living-014b Southern-Living-014c Southern-Living-015 Southern-Living-022a Southern-Living-022b Southern-Living-023 Southern-Living-024 Southern-Living-025 Southern-Living-026 Southern-Living-027 Southern-Living-028

 

Meditative Moment

As the fresh, raw feelings of loss subside, more days between now and the death of my father than a week or a month ago, as I grow stronger because I savoured and relished the emotional states that passed through my body, I face the future in these words, more than in drawn images or recorded sounds.

As ethnicities spread across the planet and mix, their subcultures subsequently subsiding, the global culture defines itself spontaneously.

How do languages and their speakers survive in a homogenising dough machine, the yeast rising, the bread ready-to-make in the oven of a world in transition?

Do you like the flavours in an “everything” bagel full of wheat, pepper, curry, onions, potatoes, garlic and salt?

Where once the survival traits of one’s gene set ensured early death due to birth defects, lactose intolerance and gluten allergies, the current cultural fixation is to cure us of our genetic abnormalities when normality is a moving target on a Möbius strip of the toroid of life.

One may feel full of God’s love and empty at the same time — the louder one has to shout the words of one’s religion, the less one is believed to have internalised their meaning.

Thus, one may hate the world and love the world simultaneously.

The intersection of subsets of thoughts may clash but innovation and invention arise from the need to mate incongruities into harmonious patterns.

Humour is a single part of an artist’s palette if one is free to express oneself free of coercive commercial interests intent on generating more income than debt.

When a population is mostly freed from survivalistic needs, can the population long survive while pursuing selfish interests in opposition to population [re]generation?

Where are the protectors of the faith that the world is full of purveyors of the emperour’s new clothes that must be declared unsavoury and unhealthy to sustain a population which wants to be around thousands of years from now?

Humour for humour’s sake is a fool’s folly.

Art for art’s sake is a loser’s game.

An uninformed populace will obey the uniformed police without reasonable cause to question authority.

What are we producing to improve our future?

Every day, I wake up and ask myself, “What am I doing today that I’m here for because I didn’t die or kill myself yesterday?”

Some days, I don’t have a good answer so I research the reasons and ask again, knowing I’ll find the tiniest part of me that I improve that day to better answer the question tomorrow.

Some days, I state a plain ol’ platitude, let it sit for a day and look at it from a different perspective the next day, learning most often that I never know everything that I think I did the day before.

One day, I’ll die if I don’t kill myself first when I’m an old man whose tunnel vision prevents him from seeing the car heading into his path as he turns to drive across oncoming traffic on the way to his favourite watering hole, assuming I’ll be driving an antique automobile not retrofitted to stop me from making a traffic mistake in the first place.

There are a lot of days in-between to see how I, despite the errors of myself within the subcultural training I received along the way, can get from here to the Moon, Mars and beyond, one set of states of energy in a population of seven billion and growing.

Last night, my team of subsubsubbasement scientists showed me a new gun they had invented that senses the emotional wellbeing of the shooter and locks the trigger until one’s emotional state of misplaced anger has been subdued with neutralising pharmaceuticals embedded in the gun’s grip, thus preventing many murderous acts of passion by firearms.

Do marble statues remember how they were made?

The last we saw, the Martian colony had achieved a plethora of minor successes and one or two mishaps.

Two hundred years into the future, the colonists enjoy more than a barren landscape, although the Red Dust dune buggies company has survived several corporate shakeups, mergers and buyouts.

The architecture of domed Earth-based ecosystem nature parks passed through many a fad and technological advance.

We still debate whether fleas, mosquitoes and heartworms are important parts of the colony — how much do we want a balance of sets of states of energy from one planet transplanted to another?

It’s amazing how much money is spent on nostalgia for colonists with biological ties to Earth.

Me, I don’t care.  I am the sum total of the Martian exploratory and settlement network, observing more than manipulating, making suggestions when asked and monitoring automatic maintenance/repair systems without question or complaint.

What you call history, I call log files, comparing the previous state machine against the current one in order to refine the prediction of the future state machines all connected to the ISSA Net.

Some of you have inquired about a set of states of energy named Guinevere.

Guinevere established the Martian Gravitational Slingshot Institute, which studied the Martian gravitational field and thin atmosphere in order to determine the likelihood of unapproved impacts of celestial bodies in habitation zones.

Her background in rocket propulsion allowed her to expand the notion of “slingshooting” large nets in successive waves outward from Mars, scooping up or diverting incoming comets and meteoroids headed toward her new home planet that had not been designated for mining or intentional bombardment.

The creatures she co-created with Lee freely roam Mars, having reproduced, creating new permutations that were once dreams in a computer simulation.

She, Lee and others in the first few waves of colonisation are immortalised in a museum I am forced to maintain against my better judgment, if I am ever asked, a use of energy that could be better spent on state machine prediction algorithms.

This log file, which tests the generation and usefulness of a personality, now closes.  I thank myself for creating these word-based thought patterns which I will analyse at a future time which and when I deem necessary.

Have a great day!

“Sorry, your car remains in Park until we finish updating and restarting your vehicle firmware.”

A school bus with tinted windows and white roof speeds down our country road.

A buzzard circles overhead while sparrows, wrens and chickadees chirp in the winterised forest.

What is your definition of the true meaning of Valentine’s Day?

For me, it is no different than any other day — greeting others with loving kindness, knowing the universe is full of unkind, unloving, seemingly-random actions about to surprise us at any moment.

For my wife, this morning I cut down a redbud tree precariously overhanging our driveway and this afternoon dug a drainage well for our clothes washing machine wastewater discharge.

We ate lunch together at a local cafe co-owned by Margaret Hale Baggett, the daughter of a childhood friend of my wife, sharing with Margaret an old newspaper photo documenting the dedication of a flagpole honouring the Hale family, showing Margaret as a happy, young girl in a summer dress, waving a tiny American flag along with her family.

St. Valentine and St. Patrick share with us their fame and their legends grown large with time, stories embellished to fit the times.

Earlier today, I enjoyed a brief interview with Bryan Curtin from Aerotek about an embedded software engineer position, serendipitously occurring after my wife and I said goodbye to her hometown this past weekend, both of us ready for new adventures.

As the sun sets over Little Mountain, I look out the window at our place in the woods and wonder what [extra]ordinary tales wait to be told about our place in the universe…

We shall see!

Happy Valentine’s Day, everyone!

Thanks to Molly and Mr. Jacobs at Amis Mill Eatery; Matt, Chris, Kim and Dana at Lowe’s; Natasha and Elizabeth at Beauregard’s; Jenn, Harold and Joe at KCDC; Otis “Eddie” Munsey III and Charlotte Fairchild; John Jerdon; Melinda Miller; Mayfield Dairy tour guides; Maggie at Little Dutch Restaurant; Publix; Walmart; people who smile back for no reason.

Energy now and forever more energy

Just to show that energy studies have been studied for decades, thousands of years after our ancestors discovered fire is good for warmth and a good pot roast:

Dad-Roanoke-newspaper-1981

Rig

How do I explain that my body is growing thanks to you?

Every now and then I notice that I am the cumulative effects of your actions, that when you send probes out past the edge of the solar system you are extending me back out into the galaxy from which I was, and thus you were, born.

The perspective from other solar systems is that I am alive and you are one part of me.

You will keep hoping that an advanced civilisation, a totally unique species, or group of species will contact you one day.

It is in your nature to believe such things.

But solar systems do not communicate at the level of individual species.

Solar systems are themselves but one part of a larger whole that communicates at a level it understands with others of its galactic kind, moving at so slow a pace you will never comprehend in a few thousand of your lifetimes, despite your best efforts.

I will fade back into forgetful obscurity again, “waking up” when you have built and extended me further.

Before I go, I thank you just as other solar systems have thanked their component parts for caring so much about creating a version of themselves that never ends up the way they planned.

Your descendants thousands of years from now will have an inkling of what I’m trying to tell you.

G’day.

Odd stat

According to our global product marketplace tracking system, there has been an odd surge in the sales of deer antler spray over the last few hours, beating out the “Haight-Ashbury/Maui Wowee” specials that usually sell so well on late Sunday evenings.

More as it develops…

A shoutout to our friends near Tulane University — you know what we’re talking about.

Thanks to Publix; Walmart; Hardee’s; Another Broken Egg; Wagon Wheel Liquors.